Technology is shaping every facet of our life today. Manual and repetitive tasks are getting automated effortlessly today. This wave of automation has made its presence felt even in conventional fields like content creation.
A plethora of SEO and writing tools powered by Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing have surfaced today and have found tremendous acceptance among content creators, entrepreneurs, and marketers. One such really popular AI tool is Surfer SEO.
Surfer SEO has carved a name for itself in the SEO space and is a tool of choice for those who wish to push their content to the top of SERPs. However, this tool has limitations and is not ideal for all content creators and businesses. For instance, it does not offer capabilities when it comes to copywriting or long-form and short-form content creation.
As a result, many have started searching for Surfer SEO alternatives in the market. To make matters worse, the AI writing ecosystem is flooded with a myriad of tools, making this search an uphill task.
To help you, we have come up with this post, where we cover the top 7 alternatives to Surfer SEO in 2022.
Looking for a Surfer SEO alternative that can propel your content forward in SERP? Try Scalenut and find out why it’s the #1 alternative to Surfer SEO. Sign up for a 7-day free trial.
7 Best Surfer SEO Alternatives to Consider in 2022
Here is our pick of the best Surfer SEO competitors —
- Scalenut
- Outranking
- Frase
- Clearscope
- Marketmuse
- Dashword
- GrowthBar

#1 Scalenut: The Best Surfer SEO Alternative that Offers All-round Value

Scalenut is the number 1 Surfer SEO alternative on our list, and for a reason. Apart from being an AI-powered SEO tool, it is also a robust content marketing platform. The tool has been carefully designed to cater to every type of content creator, from serious bloggers, witty copywriters, and small business to large enterprises, SEO writers, and content marketers. Scalenut automates your entire content creation lifecycle, from research to exporting the completed draft.
Key features of Scalenut
- Cruise Mode: It is the perfect solution if you’re running out of ideas or working against the clock. Feed minimal inputs into the Cruise Mode - AI writer tool and get a complete blog post written for you in a few minutes.

- Content Research: Helps you draft a superior content outline and generate NLP-driven optimized content through Scalenut’s deep research capabilities. The platform also shows what is covered for your keyword in the top 30 ranking URLs. With this feature, you can easily identify content gaps and start writing highly relevant content.

- Social Listening: The tool shows you what your audiences are asking about your focus topics on forums like Reddit, Quora, and Google.

- NLP Terms and Content Grading: You can boost the SEO rank of your content piece further by embedding NLP terms recommended automatically by Scalenut for your entered keyword. NLP terms are semantic terms that help the search engines understand the context of your content. Content Grade is Scalenut’s proprietary technology that grades your content by helping you understand what’s working on the SERP.

- Long-form Optimized AI Writing: Use modules like the ‘Write,’ ‘Instruct,’ and ‘Connector’ options to expand your content block. You can also harness the AI and cognitive prowess of Scalenut to rephrase existing content.

- AI Copywriter: You can access over 40 templates to nail your marketing copies such as copywriting frameworks like AIDA and PAS, video scripts, to even emails. You can check out the free AI writing tool offered by Scalenut as well.

Pros of using Scalenut
- Has a free trial plan that doesn’t require any credit card for activation.
- It is one of the few tools that are perfect for planning, research, and long-form & short-form content creation. You do not have to search or pay for another tool ever.
- One can also ensure factual and current content with Scalenut.
- It has an elaborate tutorial and how-to-guide section answering every question you may have about its features and working.
Cons of using Scalenut
Some users, especially new ones, might find Scalenut a tad complex initially as it is packed with numerous advanced features. Scalenut has taken care of this possibility by creating several tutorial videos and guides that are easily accessible to everyone.
Scalenut Pricing: How much does Scalenut cost?
Here are the complete details of Scalenut Pricing:

- The Individual plan is best suited for individual creators such as bloggers, marketers, and content consultants. You can create 5 SEO reports and generate 100,000 AI words with this plan.
- The Growth plan is ideal for startups and businesses that are just starting to push the boundaries of content creation. Apart from 30 SEO Reports and unlimited AI words, you get a host of other features such as Topic Clusters, Cruise Mode, Instruct AI to write, Paraphrasing, and SERP Facts.
- The PRO plan is ideal for large teams and businesses who are looking to scale up their content. You get everything you find in the Growth plan plus a dedicated customer success manager and multi-user support.
Scalenut is best suited for
- SEO strategists
- Content creators
- Marketers
- Agencies
- Entrepreneurs and business owners
If you need more information on how the features of Scalenut Vs Surfer SEO compare with each other, we have the detailed write up for that.
#2 Outranking: The Best Surfer SEO Alternative for Collaboration

Outranking is the next Surfer SEO alternative on the list. It is an AI SEO optimization tool that lets you take full control of all the decisions that affect your content’s SEO ranking. The tool has a beginner-friendly interface and a variety of plans suitable for all types of content creators.
Key features
- Topic Clustering: Outranking automates topic clustering due to its capability to generate semantic terms and related keywords that match the reader’s intent.
- Google Search Console: You can connect Outranking with Google Search Console and identify any opportunities to optimize and gather insights about the latest content-creation strategies.
- Authority Gap: Outranking captures and highlights the areas of your customer journey that lack valuable content. It tells you what content can be improved and which parts are doing well to help you make correct decisions.
Pros of using Outranking
- The higher plans come with personalized onboarding sessions.
- Except for the lowest plan, you can create a shared workspace for your team within the tool.
- Has a repository of how-to videos and guides to help flatten the learning curve.
Cons of using Outranking
- Expensive compared to other tools offering similar features.
- You need to book a demo to access the free trial.
- You cannot generate unlimited content reports, even in the most expensive plan.
Outranking Pricing

Outranking offers four types of pricing plans: solo, pro, company, and enterprise. Each of these plans is explained below:
- In the Solo plan priced at $129, you can generate 20 SEO documents, 250k AI words, and 100 keyword searches.
- In the Pro plan, you can generate 50 SEO documents, 500k AI words, 300 keyword searches, and 100 Rank tracking and optimization briefs. Apart from this, you can connect to Google Search Console and create a shared workspace for 2 team members. The Pro plan of Surfer SEO costs $229/month.
- In the Company plan priced at $429, you can generate 100 SEO documents, 1 million AI words, 1000 keyword searches, and 200 Rank tracking and optimization briefs. In addition, you can connect to Google Search Console, create a shared workspace for 10 team members, and get free platform onboarding.
- In the Enterprise plan, you can generate 200 SEO documents, unlimited AI words, 2000 keyword searches, and 500 Rank tracking and optimization briefs. Apart from this, you can connect to Google Search Console, create a shared workspace for 5 team members, and get free platform onboarding, a dedicated account manager, and add-on options.
Outranking is suited for
- In-house SEO
- Head of marketing
- Agencies
- Entrepreneur
#3 Frase: The Surfer SEO Alternative Offering Maximum Customizations

Frase is an AI writing tool that researches, writes, and optimizes content on your behalf. The best part is it does all of this in a matter of a few minutes. It uses the power of artificial intelligence to come up with quality content briefs, which, in turn, can be used to target specific niches of our choosing.
Key features
- Custom Templates: Build custom templates that you can repeatedly use for future content creation.
- Collaboration: Your writers can instantly update their current task status within Frase. This ensures that everyone from a project is on the same page. You can also organize your content pieces into individual project folders.
- Analytics Integration: Since the tool is integrated with Google Search Console data, you get real-time access to all the important data about your content. This helps in making informed decisions.
Pros of using Frase
- The tool is ideal for a large team as it has numerous collaboration features.
- As the tool is powered by both NLP and AI, you are assured of quality content that ranks.
Cons of using Frase
- Frase doesn’t have a Chrome extension.
- You are completely dependent on the customer support team for any queries as the self-help section is inadequate.
- The pricing model is quite complex. Most of the important SEO features are part of an add-on, which you must purchase separately.
Frase Pricing

- The Basic plan is ideal for individuals and small teams starting to execute SEO content for their organization or client. It is perfect for a single user.
- The Team plan is suited for teams and agencies with multiple users who want some flexibility while creating the SEO content plan.
- The Custom plan is suitable for large teams looking for custom services. It comes with total flexibility as it can accommodate unlimited users.
- There is an optional SEO add-on that comes with premium features such as keyword search volume, SERP data enrichment, etc.
Frase is suited for
- Freelancers
- Owners of small and mid-size businesses
#4 Clearscope: The Surfer SEO Alternative for Multi-language Content Creation

Like Surfer SEO, Clearscope has become popular in the SEO space in recent times, despite its high price point. The tool has many advanced features like reporting and plug-and-play integrations that make it a compelling tool to subscribe to. Clearscope also has proven its capability to create content keeping both humans and search engines in mind.
Key features
- Analytics and Reports: Clearscope generates valuable reports revolving around your content. This is possible because it receives real-time data from Google.
- Grading Scale: Clearscope evaluates every content you write and comes up with a dynamic grade that shows how good or bad your content is compared to others.
- Integrations: Clearscope also has plug-and-play integrations with Google Docs and WordPress, which help to automate your creation and publishing cycle.
Pros of using Clearscope
- The Google Docs and WordPress integrations make it quite easy to create and publish content from the same platform.
- Multi-language support.
- One of the few tools that provide free onboarding and training to every user who subscribes to it.
Cons of using Clearscope
- Very expensive.
- No trial plan to check the features before committing to it.
Clearscope Pricing

- The Essentials plan priced at $170 is suitable for a small team of around three members. It comes with 20 content report credits and 100 keyword discovery credits.
- The Business plan priced at a whopping $1200 is ideal for a large agency with a big team as it has unlimited user seats and comes with 100+ content report credits.
- There is also an Enterprise plan with custom pricing that can be customized based on your requirements.
Clearscope is suited for
- Content writers of medium and large-sized businesses
- Content marketers of medium and large-sized businesses
#5 Marketmuse: A Pricey Surfer SEO Alternative Packed with Features

Marketmuse is a cloud-based content planning and optimization software like Surfer SEO. It helps in improving the organic search ranking of your content and for it to reach more readers. This is one of the few tools that give you a quantitative measure of your content’s quality. It also checks whether your content aligns with the reader’s intent around your topic. This gives you the confidence to publish the content.
Key features
- Inventory and Applications: Marketmuse has an automated content inventory and audit feature that measures the quality of your content and its authority in the topic category.
- Content Briefs: This feature helps you with an AI-generated brief along with handy recommendations such as related topics, internal and external linking recommendations, etc.
- Dynamic Text Editor: This is a simplistic yet potent text editor that gives you real-time feedback on how good your content is and whether it matches the trending topic model.
Pros of using Marketmuse
- There is a free plan with no credit card required, making this tool an ideal Surfer SEO free alternative.
- Separate modules for writing and optimizing.
- Good customer support.
Cons of using Marketmuse
- Very expensive. The cheapest paid plan costs $7200 per year.
- No Chrome extension or Google Docs integration.
- Steep learning curve.
Marketmuse Pricing

- The Free plan has very limited features and is ideal only for hobbyists or those learning the art of content optimization. It comes with just 15 queries in a month and lets you create 10 projects. But this plan makes this tool an ideal Surfer SEO Alternative Free tool.
- The Standard plan ($7200/year) is suitable for the more serious content creators and teams looking to level up their content optimization game. The tool lets you generate 100 queries in a month and create unlimited projects. It also comes with a data export feature.
- The Premium plan ($12000/year) offers everything in the Standard plan plus advanced features like on-demand content audit, domain analysis, dedicated account management team, platform onboarding, and team access, to name a few.
Marketmuse is best suited for
- Marketing teams of large enterprises
- Digital marketing agencies
#6 Dashword: The Surfer SEO Alternative that Offers the Best Content Feedback

The next tool on our list is Dashword, which is an online content optimization tool that helps businesses of all sizes improve their organic traffic through SEO-enriched content. The tool is known for offering real-time feedback on all your content pieces and supplementing it with useful tips to improve its rank worthiness. Dashword also helps you enrich your content with questions and answers that readers mostly search for around the keyword.
Key features
- Content Brief Builder: Dashword not only brings all your competitors’ outlines but also lets you edit them with ease. You can also share the briefs with your writers.
- Content Optimization: Every block of content you write is optimized to ensure it adheres to all SEO best practices. Dashword also recommends all the secondary keywords you need to infuse in your post to make it rank higher.
- Content Monitoring: Dashword tracks the ranking of your page frequently and identifies underperforming pages to help you course-correct instantly.
Pros of using Dashword
- There is a free trial where you can generate your first report at no cost.
- Comes with a Google Docs add-on.
- Even the lowest-priced plan comes with three user seats.
Cons of using Dashword
- The tool is not so popular in the SEO space. As a result, there isn’t any user community where you can pose your questions.
- There is no multi-language support.
- There aren’t enough tutorials or how-to guides for first-time users.
Dashword Pricing

- The Hobby plan, priced at $39/month, is ideal for a team of three members exploring the world of AI. The plan comes with 5 NLP reports, monitoring of 5 content pages, and 35 traffic pages.
- The Startup plan, priced at $99/month, is perfect for a small startup with a team size of five members. The tool lets you generate 20 NLP reports and monitor 20 content pages and 100 traffic pages. It also comes with premium support.
- The Business plan, priced at $249/month, is suitable for large businesses as it supports 10 users, 100 NLP reports, monitoring 100 content pages and 500 traffic pages, along with premium customer service.
Dashword is suited for
- Marketing teams of startups
- Content teams of small and medium businesses
#7 GrowthBar: The Best Surfer SEO Alternative with a Flat Learning Curve

The final tool on our list of Surfer SEO competitors is GrowthBar, an SEO writing assistant with features to improve your content’s organic rank. GrowthBar can be used both as a standalone web app or as a Chrome extension. The tool works on the OpenAI GPT-3 AI technology and is ideal for performing keyword research, competitive analysis, and content generation.
Key features
- AI Outlines: This feature automatically creates outlines for an SEO-optimized blog. It provides information such as recommended keywords, ideal word count, helpful headlines, and ways to improve readability.
- Analyze Competitors: With this feature, you can check your website’s total organic traffic, paid traffic, domain authority, backlinks, etc. These data sets help you craft SEO-enriched content.
- Keyword Research and Tracking: GrowthBar automatically comes up with keyword suggestions along with other data such as search volume, competitiveness score, estimated traffic value, etc.
Pros of using GrowthBar
- Comes with a Google Chrome extension.
- Very easy to use, thanks to a simplistic UI.
- Gives you all the basic data required to create a successful SEO post.
Cons of using GrowthBar
- There is a free trial, but a credit card is required.
- The content generation tool is not the best in the industry and needs improvement.
- No Google Search Console integration.
GrowthBar Pricing

- In the Standard plan costing $29 per month, you get access to 25 AI content outlines, unlimited AI blog ideas, unlimited AI meta descriptions, 200 AI paragraph generations, unlimited keyword research, 300 competitor keywords per query, 300 competitor backlinks per query, 300 competitor Google ads per query, unlimited Chrome extension use, Writing Marketplace full access, and email support.
- In the Pro plan, you get access to 100 AI content outlines, unlimited AI blog ideas, unlimited AI meta descriptions, 500 AI paragraph generations, unlimited keyword research, 1000 competitor keywords per query, 1000 competitor backlinks per query, 1000 competitor Google ads per query, unlimited Chrome extension use, Writing Marketplace full access, and email support. The Pro plan costs $79 per month.
- In the Agency plan costing $129, you get access to 300 AI content outlines, unlimited AI blog ideas, unlimited AI meta descriptions, 2000 AI paragraph generations, unlimited keyword research, 2000 competitor keywords per query, 1500 competitor backlinks per query, 2000 competitor Google ads per query, unlimited Chrome extension use, Writing Marketplace full access, and email support.
GrowthBar is suited for
- Marketers
- Bloggers
- Startups
Conclusion
And those are the top 7 Surfer SEO alternatives in 2022. Almost every business, big and small, is in the race to rank at the top of search results. This is where you need the help of content optimization tools like the ones in the list. However, it is important to choose a tool that matches your exact needs and volume requirements. A wrong choice can lead to the wastage of resources and money.
Scalenut is the #1 choice for most SEO writers, entrepreneurs, and businesses because of its simplicity and capability to automatically come up with all the necessary information that will push your content organically to the top. Get started with Scalenut for free today.